Best Turkey Recipes

Best Turkey Recipes – Leftover turkey is perhaps Thanksgiving’s best food tradition and a recipe potential. There’s no other holiday where the remains of the meal take on almost as much importance as the meal itself. Think of them as the ingredients that keep on giving.

Common leftovers include turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing. And then there are the odds and ends: carrots, celery, onions, mushrooms, bread. All of these can make an encore appearance without too much trouble.

You can pile turkey high on sandwiches, top it with stuffing and slather on some cranberry sauce. Or toss leftover turkey into soups and casseroles or top salads with fat cubes of it.

Paul Penney, a chef with Health Alliance Plan in Detroit, says one way to use leftover stuffing is as a crust for quiche.

“It’s ideal for a drier type of stuffing, because you want it more like a crispy, crusty sort of thing,” Penney says.

Shepherd’s pie is another easy dish, Penney says, because you can use the leftover turkey and perhaps roasted carrots, and top the pie with leftover mashed potatoes.

A fun leftovers dish Penney remembers as a kid in Australia is bubble and squeak. Penney says you take mashed potatoes and mix them with any chopped-up vegetable to make a patty.

“Fry the patties in a pan filled with butter,” says Penney. “It’s a dish that would make Paula Deen smile.”

Penney also says to think about passing leftovers along.

“If you know someone nearby that can use an extra meal, give it away,” he says.